SPEECH AT A MEETING OFThE COMMUNIST GROUP IN THE ALL-RUSSIA CENTRAL COUNCIL OF TRADE UNIONS. MARCH 15, 1920[3]

Published:First published in 1924 in the book: N. Lenin (V. I. Ulyanov),Statyi i rechi po voprosam professionalnogo dvizheniya(Articles and Speeches on Questions of the Trade Union Movement), issued by the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions.

      Printed from the book text, collated with the stenographic report.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1971,

      Moscow,Volume 36,

      pages520-523.Translated:Andrew RothsteinTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive.You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work, as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

ComradeLozovsky said that Comrade Bukharin and I
will be partly in agreement with him. That is true. You
have written the theses, but what are you defending? Then
you must strike out your theses, because they say: “as a
basic principle”, but we do not take practice as our point
of departure. So write that down, then. What in that case
remains of your theses? Today I had occasion to be at a
meeting of the water transport workers, and to argue there,
and Comrade Ishchenko said: “In any case, there is a
guarantee that we shall put the question as practical men.”
All right then, put that down; but what you have written is
something different. You have written: “as a basic
principle”. Where is your justification, who is defending it?
No one. They edge away. Write that down, and then half
our differences will disappear. And after all, what you
have written is untrue: where do you answer the argument
which is put forward, against collective management; where
is the participation of the broad masses, with three, five
or seven workers taking part in the collegiums? Do you
want participation by the broad masses or don’t you? Of
course, those who don’t want it are to be thrown out, but
that is no argument. You say, the “broad non-Party masses
of workers”. There are no such masses in a singlecollegium: it’s not true, and that’s no way to reason. That
is not the system you need to draw in the broad non-Party
masses: you have to train, to promote, to enliven. How
many workers have the Central Committee of the textile
workers and others put forward? How many of them have
been promoted and how many demoted during the last
three months? Give me figures, and then I will say: there
are the people. It’s childish to write “principles”: after
studying it for two years, all you have written are
principles—people will laugh. Here your argument does not
correspond to your conclusion: participation of the broad
masses is assured by a collegium of seven, or of three,
persons. People will laugh at it. That is my first objection.

Secondly,I refer you to the bourgeoisie. Whom shall
we learn from, if not the bourgeoisie? How did they
manage? They managed as a class when it was the ruler, but
didn’t it appoint managers? We haven’t yet caught up
with them in their degree of development. They knew how
to rule as a class, and to manage through anyone you please
individually, entirely in their own interests; at the top
they had a small collegium and they didn’t discuss basic
principles and didn’t write such resolutions. They had
all power in their hands, and regarded as competent the
one who knew his job. The workers have not yet reached
that point, and in order to win we must give up our old
prejudices. The rule of the working class is reflected in
the constitution, the ownership and in the fact that it is
we who are running things, while management is quite
another matter, it is a question of skill, a question of
experience. The bourgeoisie understood this perfectly, but
we have not yet realised it. Let’s get down to learning.
We have already said here that we must hold power firmly
in our hands, but we haven’t yet learned how to manage;
we have to do a great deal to learn the business of
management.

Mythird argument: competence. How can you show
that it is possible to manage without being competent, to
manage without full knowledge, without knowledge of the
science of management? It is ridiculous! What sort of
system is it? Why all the words that you have spoken here?
In order to manage, one must know the job and be asplendid administrator. Where does it say that for this reason
we need collective management? The fact that we have
few experienced workers proves the contrary; what follows
is that collective management is intolerable. In that case,
adopt theses in which you say: keep a commissar or a
commission, etc., attached to every expert. So long as we lack
the principle of competence and respect for the expert,
we remain at the primitive level. In that way we shall
never create any industrial front. Unity of will! Without
this there is no dictatorship at the front, but dawdling.
You know it is a typical result, that there is friction there,
not management. Appoint an expert with experience; but
we know by now that when we combine a competent person
with an incompetent one in a collegium, we create a
multitude of wills and complete confusion. That is my fifth
argument.[1]Everyone is writing resolutions about each
person being answerable for his own job. But where is this being
carried out? Let them say: where did we divide
responsibility according to that principle? We have been learning for two
years how to run the state, and still write: “the basic
principle.” This is ridiculous, this is on the second-form level;
but let’s have your experience, and we shall see from
it to what extent you are competent people and where the
lack of competence tells. They say that under the
artillery department the works managements were poor. That
is the example Lozovsky and Tomsky have quoted. When
was this? Comrade Lozovsky, we have to reckon with the
condition of the Soviet Republic. What did we begin with,
who was at the head? Krylenko, Dybenko and Podvoisky,
before we had Trotsky—and that was our collective
management. And if Kolchak and Denikin lambasted us, why
did they? Because while we had seven men in charge, we
had to learn for two years, and after that we went over
to one-man management. Do we have to reckon with this,
or not? Of course, it’s only a trifle, you’ve just taken the
two years’ history of the Republic and crossed it out. Why?
You don’t like it, do you? Do it all over again. And what
about Rykov: he was appointed ExtraordinaryPlenipotentiary for Soviet Defence, and Rykov began dragging things
out of the mess by himself. You don’t know your own
history, the history of your Supreme Economic Council and
of the Soviet Republic. History tells us that from collective
management by the workers we went over to management by
tens, we broke our necks, and Kolchak lambasted us, and
it was a good thing he did, because we learned something
thereby, we learned that collective management must be
held in a tight grip. We have described four systems:
accept these four
systems,[4]accept the C.C. theses. Then
you will be taking your stand on the groundwork of the two
years’ history of the Soviet power, of its experience, and
not on arguments which are primitive, which will muddle
you ...[2]for an adult worker, who is not afraid of any
expert and says, “if you put experienced people in charge,
our machinery will run”. That is how an adult workman
reasons, while the timid ones say: “I’m afraid that I shall
be left without an expert.” That is a sign of weakness.
Stop whining, and be your age.

[1]Evidentlythere was a fourth argument against collective
management, but it did not find reflection in the minutes.—Ed.

[2]Passagenot clear.—Ed.

[3]Themeeting of the Communist group of the All-Russia Central
Council of Trade Unions was called on March 15, 1920, to discuss
the theses of M. P. Tomsky on the tasks of the trade unions,
published inEkonomicheskaya Zhizn(Economic Life) No. 54, March 10,
1920. They had been discussed beforehand by a commission set
up by the group, but it had retained all the principled
propositions of the theses. The author held that industrial enterprises
should be run on collective lines and said so in his theses. This was
supported by the majority of the group. At the meeting of the
group, Lenin spoke several times, making amendments and
criticising various points of the theses, and supporting the principle
of one-man management.

[4]Inview of the fact that no generally accepted type of management
for Soviet enterprises had crystallised, various combinations
were allowed while the process was on, namely: =

1) the enterprise
is headed by an executive from among the workers, who has a
specialist engineer for an assistant; =

2) the enterprise is headed by
a specialist engineer, who is the actual manager of the
enterprise, and he has a worker commissar with broad powers and theduty to deal with every aspect of the business; =

3) the enterprise
is headed by a specialist director, with one or two Communist
assistants with powers and the duty to look into every branch
of management but without the right to rescind the director’s
instructions; and =

4) the enterprise is headed by a small well-knit
group whose chairman is responsible for the work of the group
as a whole. This form of organisation in industry was adopted by
the Ninth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) (seeKPSS v resolyutsiyakh...,
Part One, 1954, p. 483).